...in iPhoneography Central's "Apps Uncovered"

Last week, iphoneographycentral.com published the recent installment in their "Apps Uncovered" series...and I'm honored to have two of my 'snapseeded' photos included:

"Red Doors, Sokcho"

Backstory/Apps Used: --like stepping back in time, this seaside district of Sokcho, S.Korea; a relic of the Korean War--the houses of N.Korean refugees and their descendants in the "Abai village" neighborhood (snapseed & colorsplash apps used; this photo among the "Honorable Mentions" in this year's Mobile Photo Awards)

     For "Red doors, Sokcho"--I took this with an iPhone4 a couple of summers ago. Not far from the location of the upcoming 2018 Winter Olympics, Sokcho, South Korea has a frontier-feel. (The setting is gorgeous--between mountains and the sea, but lax zoning laws have led to haphazard construction.) The neighborhood where I saw this streetscape is a relic of the Korean War--on a spit of land between a lagoon and the sea, refugees from what would become North Korea built makeshift dwellings, thinking these would be just for the short-term... When the DMZ was drawn in 1953, they found themselves stranded, and this neighborhood has now been home to a several generations of these N. Korean descendants. It feels like a different world from the wifi-and-caffeinated frenzy of Seoul. I used snapseed and the ColorSplash apps for this scene. ColorSplash allowed me to isolate the red doors and shirt stripes, converting the rest of the scene into greyscale. Then I used snapseed's 'tilt-shift' filter and the 'white balance' option found among the 'tune image' options. Combining the 'hyper'-sepia tone and the red accents reminded me of the traditional color scheme used in many older Korean scroll-paintings.

"Bear Canyon, evening"

Backstory/Apps Used: I took the photo with my iPhone5 a few months ago while on a trail-run in the foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains on the edge of Tucson, Arizona. Winter evening light is just gorgeous in the desert. I used snapseed to convert the shot into a black-and-white scene, then used ''white balance' in the 'tune image' to warm up the scene. I also used the 'drama' filter to play with the contrast. The 'tilt-shift' filter in snapseed and then the "BigLens" app allowed me to smoothen out the sky.

from mackerel in a faraway market to desert blooms...

Yesterday, I was honored to find out that this photo ("Mackerel in the Market") is featured in this week's showcase that The App Whisperer curates...

I took this photo a couple of summers ago while visiting the coastal city of Sokcho, just south of the DMZ on the east coast of South Korea. Reminded of this market scene a few days ago, I decided to re-snapseed it. I was a bit surprised that the main thing I wanted to do was to de-saturate the image--normally, you tend to want to add color intensity, but the color of the fresh mackerel and the plastic buckets was already so vivid, that I thought the picture would benefit from slightly less color--but then I did warm up the white balance a bit...Below is the original.

When I was in the market, I loved the fact that this husband-and-wife team had a baseball-game on in the background as they worked on the day's catch...

Nearby, part of the waterfront, with the mountains of Seoraksan National Park in the background:

I am just starting to experiment with the Scratchcam app. I am wary of 'over-apping,' (slapping a filter on a scene does not necessarily a 'good image' make), but I have come to like textures...So, after reading some blog posts and interviews with mobile photographers whose images I've been admiring, I added Scratchcam to my iPhone...

...And scenes from Sokcho, again, came to mind. Sokcho is scenically-situated, but it definitely ain't quaint; it's a working port with lax zoning laws. Although it's near some spectacular mountains, the town itself is not a particular draw for visitors from outside of Korea; I ended up there a couple of summers ago because an uncle of mine had moved there...And while the town's modern architecture is haphazard (and at times breathtakingly ugly), there are some historically interesting neighborhoods, the air is clean, and the seafood is amazing...

So. The bridge--I liked the idea of the segmented texture overlaid on a panorama.

...the original, three-shots-blended-by-AutoStitch:

The neighborhood around this bridge, directly north of where I was staying, was originally settled in the 1950's, during the Korean War: refugees from the North built small--what they thought would be temporary--homes. Then, when the war stopped and the DMZ was drawn, they ended up stranded here. People who had farmed the same lands for generations found themselves now on a spit of land between a lagoon and the sea...and their ad hoc construction became their new homes. In the decades since then, the neighborhood has filled in even more--a dense, utilitarian, poignant hodge-podge:

--snapseed, then Scratchcam, then snapseed again, for this edit.

And here's the original:

Compared to the now-internationally-known images of Seoul (via "Gangnam-style"), this part of Sokcho is like stepping back in time...

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Now, back to where home is now: the Sonoran Desert...

One of my favorite desert flowers around Tucson, "sacred datura:"

Solely snapseed for this edit.

I often take my iPhone with me on my long weekend morning runs, and there's a spot in Sabino Canyon where there's almost always a bunch of these blooming from April through December. Each flower lasts for just a day--opening at night, and within a few hours of the following sunrise, closing up, finished... 

Before the 'grunge'-filter texturizing:

Purple-tinged and almost lunar..

Here's one that's closed up after having bloomed,

with a new bud underneath:

post-bloom and pre-bloom; point, counterpoint...

(the original)

With PicFrame--different ways of seeing:
the original...b&w...

...and then for the bottom two variations, I went back to Scratchcam...

This image was chosen for this week's "Capturing the Moment" showcase by mobiography.net:

After initial cropping and editing for exposure with snapseed, I chose this particular Scratchcam texture for its geometrical qualities; I like the contrast of the overlay of 'folds' on the tendril-tipped hexagonal flower. Each rectangular 'segment' of the scene could almost stand on its own as a study of texture- or color-detail. The bottom right--with the previous day's spent bloom in the shadow of its fully open 'sibling' on this particular morning--seems, to me, to be a 'memento mori:' a foil to the largest and brightest rectangular section to its left, so full of light and life.

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Something less somber--
effervescent spring: a bee in a palo verde tree:


(kind of going for a Japanese wood-block on Korean-paper effect here...)

This time of year, my wife and I do miss the cherry blossoms up in Seattle, 
but in their own way, the palo verde here almost make up for it...

And, turning things upside down,
a reflective moment in the canyon:

featured on AMPt's twitter challenge this week.


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One last image--
yesterday's #fmsPhotoADay challenge theme was "earth;"
I couldn't resist the word- and visual-play,
so I used the TinyPlanets app to
manipulate a scene from a few weeks ago
at the Mission San Xavier del Bac:
 "Mission on Earth."

SNOW in Tucson! School, Sabino Canyon, and Saguaro National Park

During the work-week, I am a teacher...

...and so, yesterday in Tucson, when the rain began to change over to snow, I just had to let my students go outside. For this particular young woman--originally from Africa--it was the first time she'd ever seen the white stuff falling from the sky:

Snow in Tucson is a rare treat; the last time kids in this desert city enjoyed it was six years ago, before I moved here. 

As it began to accumulate, the only sane and humane thing for me to do was to let them go outside and have a snowball fight:

By mid-afternoon, the clouds had begun to lift;

I went for a hike in Sabino Canyon after work--

the lower-elevation snow was melting quickly... 

...but then the clouds began to roll back in...

...and by dinner-time, it was snowing--AND sticking--again.

It snowed for most of the evening.

So, this morning, I got up early and drove out to Saguaro National Park East, (about a 15 minute drive from where we live), hoping that if I got there before the sun came up, I'd beat the melting.

I got my wish. 

For years, I've wanted to see the rare spectacle of a snow-covered saguaro-forest...

The timing was perfect: today and tomorrow are school-holidays--it's the annual Tucson Rodeo/Fiesta de los Vaqueros. It might have been overpoweringly tempting to call in sick, had I not already had the day off...
You might get snow down in the Tucson basin, oh, maybe once a decade or so. The mountains get blanketed several times each winter, but it's rare that the snow-line drops below three- or four-thousand feet...

Frosted ocotillos looking so wintry...

...but look closely: you'll see the new spring leaf-buds under the snow:

As soon as the sun rose over the ridge of the Rincon Mountains,

I could hear the drip-drip-drip of the melting begin...

Sun, snow, and saguaros...

By mid-day, the blanket of white was a memory...

So ephemeral, snow in the desert...

Next time--when? 

It might be years from now.

By then, who knows what mobile photography will be like?

[For more snow-in-the-desert-photos (non-iphone), 

see my other blog.]

From the highest peak in the Tucson Mountains

I've been back in the classroom for a couple of days now...

Last Thursday, though, on a clear cold morning, I went for a hike in the Tucson Mountains. On the western edge of the city, this the lowest mountain range in the area, but from its highest point, Wasson Peak, you get 360-degree views over the entire area: city, wilderness and more peaks on the far horizons.

Water, sunscreen, and iphone...

it's a 7-mile round-trip desert hike with about a two-thousand-foot elevation gain.

(Do NOT do this hike in the summer; there is NO shade...but perfect from late fall through early spring.)

About 2/3 of the way up, this is the view toward the SW,

across the agricultural land of the Tohono O'odham nation,

toward Baboquivari Peak,

the 'navel of the world' in their native cosmology:

No shortage of cholla cactus along the rocky trail...

Here, looking south down the mountain range

toward the distant Santa Rita Mountains.

I played with the 'dark 1' option in the 'drama' filters for the scene above,

then with the black-and-white filter for the version below,

adjusting the white balance in the 'tune image' filter;

I like the imperfection of the flare, shooting

directly into the low sun...

...approaching the summit on the left:

(seven photos fused together with the AutoStitch app)

 Finally, at the peak--4687ft/1429m...

looking off to the NNW toward Picacho Peak...

Not as lofty as the 9000+ ft. peaks in the Santa Catalinas and the Rincons, but still high enough to feel on top of the world...

Below,
--looking NORTH toward the Tortolita Mtns
--looking from the NE to the E toward the Santa Catalina Mtns, across Oro Valley & Tucson
--looking SOUTH down the Tucson Mtns toward the distant Santa Rita Mtns
--looking toward the WEST across the Avra Valley

(made with PicFrame app)

And finally, one more saguaro-studded scene,

using 'tilt-shift' & one of the relatively new 'retrolux' filters:

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Incidentally, in the January NIK software newsletter,

in the "Spotlight on Snapseed" section

THIS blog is featured...

Thanks, NIK!

2013, day one: deer and snowcapped mountains

The first of the year dawned bright and cold here in southern Arizona. With yesterday's clouds lifting overnight, we woke up to freshly snowcapped Santa Catalina Mountains on the horizon; a perfect winter morning in the desert...a perfect day for my wife and I to take a hike. 

We weren't on the trail for five minutes yet, when:

...and then the deer practically pranced across our trail: 

...stopped to pick a fruit from a barrel cactus: 

 ...a bit of chewing:

...and finally, off to graze elsewhere:

A perfect winter day:

snowcapped Thimble Peak

above the cottonwoods in Sabino Canyon,

still hanging on to the last of last autumn's color:

Hiking boots, a bottle of water, some sunscreen...and the iPhone--all you need...

Slot Canyon landscapes, 'surrealized' with PicFrame

KaleidaCam is a great app for 'kaleidoscoping' photos, but for maximum control when playing with radial symmetry, PicFrame is more 'fine-tune-able.'

Thinking back to a couple of summers ago, when my wife and I spent some time in northern Arizona, I thought that some of the photos I took in Antelope Canyon--an already naturally surreal landscape--would be fun to manipulate into impossibly surreal landscapes using PicFrame...

First, a couple of examples showing the original landscape-shot and the radial-symmetry-'surrealization' side-by-side:

(These are all 'transplanted' snapseeded shots--

I took them with my Canon, but e-mailed the photos to 

my iPhone so I could edit them with snapseed and PicFrame--

so, not strictly 'iphoneography.')

The desert magic of erosion and symmetry:

For this last one--

the original, then with PicFrame, 

and then the cartoonish serendipity of the KaleidaCam app:

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